Background: Female, 31 (nearly 32) years old. I'm eight and a half months postpartum from the emergency C-section birth of my first child. I'm still nursing and/or pumping 8-9 times in a 24 hour period and not supplementing with any formula, though my daughter receives solid food.

I'm 5'7". Today I weighed 213 pounds. This is my lowest weight since giving birth. In my adult life I have seen a high of 246 pounds (directly after giving birth, mostly water weight) and a low of 159 pounds (after a year on WeightWatchers and a long summer of working out). I haven't seen the other side of 200 pounds since 2007.

I play soccer weekly, but really haven't done any exercise since the birth of my daughter, long walks and light hikes not counting. I joined a gym several days ago, but since I can really only go after my daughter goes to bed, I wanted to restrict my workout times to about an hour.

On the advice of my brother, who is an Army 18-Delta medic in-training and has sworn by Crossfit-type workouts for years, I came to this site.

Today I did the Week 1, Day 1 workout: 20 minutes of as many 1 pull-up, 2 push-ups, 3 squats sequences that I can do.

I did 20 sequences and fudged a bit, going about 21 minutes (so I could get to 20).

I can't even pretend to do a pull-up, as you might imagine. The bar is at the top of some large contraption and I can't jump to it from the floor, I have to balance my feet on the machine and try to jump up. I basically fall as fast as I jump. About 13 sequences in I started to try to just pull on the bar (without being able to pull my body weight up at all). Am going to have to think about how to do this. The layout of the machine makes it appear nearly impossible for me to do a lot of the suggested subs.

I was surprised at how difficult the pushups were. I'd say I did 3/4 of them on my knees ("girl" style).

Squats didn't feel difficult at all but I'm a little unsure about my form.

Then I did some ROM exercises as a way to stretch or loosen a bit. (Perhaps I will do that first next time).

I did it in 6:29. Not great, but I wasn't rushing my way through the squats on purpose so I could maximize the workout.

I meant to try the modified pullup with the towel and the bar (pulling horizontally) then forgot. Instead I just stood on the ledge and attempted to pull myself up (could not, not even a little bit) and then hung a bit. I don't know if that's really doing it for me but I was really sore today from two days ago still.

Afterwards I jogged. Keep in mind I haven't jogged since before I was pregnant 17 months ago.

5 minutes jogging 5.0 mph, 2 minutes walking 3.0 mph, 4 rounds.

Then ROM leg and arm stretching.

Then 15 crunches, my abs are still shot to heck, and 15 seconds hold leg raise at 6 inches off ground.

yay for you for starting this journey! i cannot do a pull up either, but can feel myself getting stronger. keep putting the effort in, and you will see progress. your abs will come back. it may not seem like it now, but if you can feel them hurting 24-48 hours after ab work, you know they are there, still. stronger abs will help your kick. what position do you play?

My wife just started simplefit. She does body rows (3 body rows for 1 pullup) and pushups on her knees. She still says it's hard and she gets sore. As long as your working out and improving, you get points for that and should feel great about yourself.

Any step is a great step. No matter if it's sideways sometimes. At least you are trying to change your life. That is the hardest part, The beginning. You cannot change the people around you, only yourself. All the Pullups will come in time. And persistance. I did the RECON RON pullup program. I kid you not, I could not do 1 without jumping when I started. But by the end of the 38 weeks, I did 31 in a row. Keep it up. Be patient with yourself. Results will happen.

Whatever you do, DON'T RUSH!
Be patient with yourself.
Both your mind and your body need to learn to be fit, how it feels to be full, how it feels to go ALL out, how it feels to get a good night's sleep.
To avoid yo-yo-ing, you must make lots of little changes over time, not huge changes all at once.

I could not do a pull up for the first 3-4 months of SimpleFit. Now I am on level 4 still progressing slowly a year later.

You MUST make a diary for your workouts! I have a little A5 book that I use one page for a week and every time you log each week, be it small or large you WILL see progress. And that is the key to this program. Even if you are on level one for several months like I was, you will see that you start doing body rows with you feet on this side of the door frame and in a couple of weeks your feet will be through the door or a second shaved here or an extra rep there etc.

As far as the extra ab workouts go I would stick with the SimpleFit plan to start. You will get quite a good core/ab obliques work out from the SimpleFit exercises in fact through the flab this was the first place I noticed muscle. If you have energy left at the end try a couple of different type reps like chin ups or narrow or wide push ups to add to the muscle groups. I don't do any other direct core muscle workout.